Negotiation and coordination of activities involving a number of people can be a difficult and time-consuming process, even when all participants are collocated. We propose the use of spatial proximity regions around mobile devices on a table to significantly reduce the effort of proposing and exploring content within a group of collocated people. In order to determine the location of devices on o...
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Handoff of objects and tools occurs frequently and naturally in face-to-face work; in tabletop groupware, however, digital handoff is often awkward. In this paper, we investigate ways of improving support for digital handoff in tabletop systems. We first observed how handoff works at a physical table, and then compared the performance of tangible and standard transfer techniques on digital tables....
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An advantage of physical interfaces over graphical widgets is that they bring controls closer to hand. VoodooSketch is a system that supports dynamic customisation of tabletop interfaces with physical controls that users can arrange on palettes. The system employs pen and paper techniques to achieve two novel capabilities: first, users are able to sketch controls that are immediately operational f...
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Knowledge workers often undertake tasks that involve a variety of information artifacts, including both paper and digital documents. In this paper, we first summarize findings from a study that illustrate some of the challenges of managing tasks that include both paper and digital content. We then introduce DocuDesk, a prototype interactive desk that demonstrates interaction techniques for establi...
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Based on recent demonstrations of low-cost, infrared-based point tracking, we explore two-handed, surface-less interaction for presentation. On both hands, thumb and index finger are equipped with retro-reflective markers which are tracked by a Wiimote. We contribute a robust finger pairing and pinch recognition method that allows us to discriminate the hands and to initiate actions. We apply this...
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A user study is presented that investigates how different configurations of input can influence equity of participation around a tabletop interface. Groups of three worked on a design task requiring negotiation in four interface conditions that varied the number (all members can act or only one) and type (touch versus mice) of input. Our findings show that a multi-touch surface increases physical ...
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Most tabletop groupware systems provide a single shared display, and users must coordinate access to both resources and space. In many situations, it can be difficult to manage this shared space - for example, it can be difficult to deal with clutter, to partition the work area, to divide the task, and to work with multiple objects at a time. To address these limitations, we developed an interacti...
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In this paper we examine tilted tabletops as workspaces for computer-supported group collaboration. The configuration of a tilted tabletop is considered to be in between a fully horizontal tabletop and a vertical whiteboard. We describe related work, and provide an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of such a configuration. Furthermore, we present the results of a user study about tilted...
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To date, digital tabletop research has predominantly focused on resolving fundamental software and hardware challenges introduced by this new interactive platform. Understanding not only what technical functionality a digital tabletop can provide, but also how appropriate that functionality is for different usage contexts is crucial in designing tables intended for use outside of the research lab....
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This paper presents a novel interface for a digital paint system: IntuPaint. A tangible interface for a digital paint easel, using an interactive surface and electronic brushes with a tuft of bristles, has been developed. The flexible brush bristles conduct light by means of total internal reflection inside the individual bristles. This enables to capture subtle paint nuances of the artist in a wa...
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To realize the potential of multi-touch tables, interaction designers need to create meaningful applications for them in real-world contexts. One convenient shortcut towards that end is adapting a meaningful application from another interface paradigm. In this paper, we detail the process of adapting DigiQuilt, a single-user desktop educational technology, to DigiTile, a collaborative multi-touch ...
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Multi-touch large display interfaces are becoming increasingly popular in public spaces. These spaces impose specific requirements on the accessibility of the user interfaces: most users are not familiar with the interface and expectations with regard to user experience are very high. Multi-touch interaction beyond the traditional move-rotate-scale interactions is often unknown to the public and c...
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This paper discusses some general results from an in-situ study of the use of a tabletop system for card playing that differs in several ways from most tabletop systems: 1. It was designed primarily for use by senior citizens with little or no computer experience. 2. It is a single-user system, though social interaction with nearby persons during its use is typical. 3. It includes a simple convers...
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This paper introduces TurTan, a tangible programming language for creative exploration inspired by Logo, which uses a tabletop interface with tangible objects. The aim of this project is to design a toy language for programming entertainment and creative purposes. Along this paper we also discuss some interesting technical issues we have found during its implementation such as tangible linking and...
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This paper presents selected results from an experimental study designed to compare fantasy play in a virtual and physical setting. Twenty-two children (aged 3 and 4) played in same-sex dyads with a real wooden tree house and its virtual implementation on a DiamondTouch tabletop. The study evinced several problems in the interaction with the tabletop as children often struggled to drag the objects...
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The WeSpace is a long-term project dedicated to the creation of environments supporting walk-up and share collaboration among small groups. The focus of our system design has been to provide 1) groups with mechanisms to easily share their own data and 2) necessary native visual applications suitable on large display environments. Our current prototype system includes both a large high-resolution d...
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To better understand the potential for horizontal surfaces in day-to-day work, we conducted a field study. We collected and analyzed over a month of use data from eight participants who used horizontal displays in conjunction with their existing office computer setups. Our analysis of the system logs, observations, and interview data from the study reveals clear differences in preference and use p...
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Most tabletop research presents findings from lab-based user studies, focusing on specific interaction techniques. This means we still know little about how these new interfaces perform in real life settings and how users appropriate them. This paper presents findings from a field study of an existing interactive table in a museum of natural history. Visitors were found to employ a wide variety of...
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This paper introduces the Tabletop AgilePlanner, an advanced prototype that applies tabletop technology to support collocated and distributed agile planning meetings. By introducing the novel tabletop-based project planning tool, this paper contributes to the agile and tabletop research in threefold: First, it provides real world experience of using a digital tabletop to solve practical problems, ...
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Many interactive surfaces have the ability to detect the shape of hands or objects placed on them. However, shape information is typically either condensed to individual contact points or categorized as discrete gestures. This does not leverage the full expressiveness of touch input, thus limits the actions users can perform in interactive applications. We present ShapeTouch, an exploration of int...
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Finger flicking is a familiar finger movement, and we often flick a small object on the table with a finger in our daily life. We developed a flicking gesture recognition system called the dasiaOHAJIKI interfacepsila, which can track very rapid flicking movements using a high-speed camera, and estimate the flicking power and direction in real time. In this paper, we describe the recognition techni...
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We propose a variant of the multi-touch display technology that introduces an original way of manipulating three-dimensional data. The underlying metaphor is that of a deformable screen that acts as a boundary surface between the real and the virtual worlds. By doing so, the interface can create the illusion of continuity between the userpsilas real space and the virtual three-dimensional space. T...
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In this paper we present a novel approach to text input on large interactive surfaces using a combination of strategies to resolve the inherent difficulties with text input on such a device. Instead of using a conventional full size QWERTY based layout, the idea is to use a very limited set of buttons that, by using word prediction and hints, would only require minimal finger movement. The input m...
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We present a new approach for rapidly prototyping multi-touch and object sensing surfaces. It works by liquid displacement inside a malleable projection surface. The system provides both touch and pressure information and a distinct organic quality when touched. The system is easy to build and produces a clean signal revealing multiple fingers, whole hands and other object outlines that can be pro...
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We propose a novel display technique that presents information with different visibility to multiple users. The system projects information on a screen through a revolving linear polarizer in front of the projector, and it shows information through another polarizer in front of the userpsilas viewpoint. The brightness of the observed information is reduced according to the relative angle of the po...
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